The disclosures herein relate generally to computer systems, and more particularly, to a system and method for identifying executable diagnostic routines using machine information and diagnostic information in a computer system.
A computer system may include a diagnostic package with a set of diagnostic routines that may be executed to test components in the system. The manufacturer of the computer system may purchase a diagnostic package that includes a set of diagnostic routines from a third party vendor. The diagnostic package, however, may not include platform or operating system specific information that may be used to identify the diagnostic routines that are executable on a given platform and/or operating system.
A computer manufacturer may wish to support only certain devices on certain platforms and/or operating systems. For example, a computer manufacturer may wish to sell a computer system that does not support joysticks. The diagnostic package installed by the computer manufacturer in this computer system, however, may include a diagnostic routine for a joystick that is executable by a customer. Diagnostic packages typically do not include a method for restricting the display and execution of a diagnostic routine for a component which a computer manufacturer does not wish to support. Thus, in the example above, the computer manufacturer may not be able to prevent the diagnostic routine for the joystick from being displayed and executed using only the diagnostic package.
It may be possible to write a custom installation program for each platform that specified only the components supported by each platform to allow only supported diagnostic routines to be displayed and executed. To do so, however, a computer manufacturer would need to write such a program for each different platform it offered. Such a program would require a costly and inefficient development effort and testing process for each platform sold by a manufacturer. A system and method is needed that identifies supported diagnostic routines in a diagnostic package for a given computer system regardless of the platform or operating system used by the computer system. A system and method is also needed to display only the supported diagnostic routines of the computer system to its user.